The House That Haunted Us
by Lur27
Summary: Things are not always what they look like. Murder, love and pranks meet in a scary, yet funny story. My entry to the 12th Precinct Halloween Fanfic Competition.


**A/N: **Hey there! This was my submission to the **Halloween Fanfic Competition** at **12th Precinct dot blogspot dot com** (take out the spaces). I'm not very proud of it, but the thing is that what I had in mind was too long, and I had to cut it short so it could fit into the 2500 words allowed for the competition. My intention is to go on with this and give it a proper ending, but I need to know if you guys would be willing to read it.

Thanks to TwelfthPrecinct for making this contest. I can't wait for the Christmas one to come! :D

**ENJOY!**

* * *

**The House That Haunted Us**

"_Come on, Carl!" Billy called from the dinning room door. "You're missing all the fun!"_

_Carl nodded and waved his friend off. "We're coming!" He yelled, turning to his girlfriend, who was giving him a terrified look. "Come on, Becca! This is supposed to be fun!"_

_The girl snorted and crossed her arms. "Well, it's not, ok? I'm tired of this. I wanna go home."_

"_Hey, I told you you weren't going to like this and you insisted on coming. At least try not ruin it for me, will you?"_

_Becca glared at him and turned around. "Well, excuse me if being hunted by creepers in an old haunted house is not my idea of a fun night."_

_Carl ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "It's all fake, babe. They're actors, like in the movies." He tried to reassure his girlfriend. _

_The girl shook her head. "I know, but it's still scary."_

_Carl smirked. "That's what I'm here for." He said, putting his arms around her waist. "To protect you."_

_The girl smiled and leaned her head on her boyfriend's shoulder, putting a kiss on his neck. "Ok."_

_Nothing made them suspect, that in just mere minutes, a decapitated man in a coffin was going to ruin their 'fun'._

* * *

Castle kept bouncing on his feet as they approached the crime scene. They had gotten the call half an hour ago, and since she had told him about it, the writer had been acting like a kid on Christmas morning.

The crime scene was a haunted house, a fake one, of course. Halloween was in a few days and as it happened every year, everything scary was a big hit all around the country.

A couple of years ago, a group of young men just out of college, had decided to get their own piece of the cake by creating the 'Real Haunted House Experience', and Castle was… Well, 'excited' didn't even start to cover it.

They arrived at the house, an old Victorian building that was more than perfect for the 'haunted house' charade. The place gave Kate the chills just by looking at it.

"Oh, my god! This place is awesome!" Castle shrieked, as soon as they put a foot inside the house.

Everything was set as if it were a real abandoned house. The antique furniture was dusty, there were spider webs hanging of the ceiling and some of the stuff was covered with dirty, white sheets. It was creepy. Horror-movie creepy.

Castle kept commenting on everything he spotted around him. "Look at these old paintings." He said, touching one of the frames and then cleaning his finger in his pants. "They're horrible!"

"Ok, Castle, I know you're excited, but we're here to investigate a _murder_. Try to be a little less… cheerful, ok?" Kate scolded as she turned around, trying to hide a smirk. She really loved that dorky side of his.

They walked into the big living room, the printed wallpaper making Kate's eyes hurt at the horrible pattern. '_Horror house or not,_ _who would want to put that atrocity on their walls? _' She thought. The room was enormous. Three big windows surrounded the place with heavy, blue velvet curtains. Most of the furniture was covered with sheets and the big chimney was still lit, the sound and the light of the fire giving the living room an even more phantasmagoric look.

Uniforms and CSU agents were all around the room, searching for any kind of clue and documenting every single thing they thought out of place; which had to be a very hard task, since everything should be out of place in a haunted house, right?

They approached Ryan and Esposito, who were standing in the middle of the room before an open casket, observing while Lanie examined the body.

"A body in a coffin…" Castle started. "I thought we put them there after Lanie cut them open, not before."

The ME turned around, giving Castle a glare, her left eyebrow arching dangerously. "Aren't you funny, Writer Boy…" She replied.

Kate chuckled, giving her partner and amused look as she walked closer to the wooden box, peeking over it. "Garlic?" She asked incredulously.

Lanie nodded, handing the detective one of the hundreds of garlic heads that were on the coffin. "Yup; tons of them."

"According to the witnesses they were covering the body." Ryan chimed in. "Do you think this could be any kind of ritual?"

"Hm. I don't know." Kate mumbled, rounding the casket as she took a look at the body. "The head was completely cut off…" She observed. "Apart from the garlic, is there anything that could suggest a ritual murder?"

Lanie shook her head. "No. Not that I can see right now. Sometimes there are marks on the body, herbs or specific kinds of food on the stomach… You'll have to wait until I perform the autopsy."

"Ok. Thanks, Lanie." The detective said, stepping aside the coffin and signaling the boys and Castle to follow her.

"Have you talked to all the witnesses yet?" Beckett asked the boys.

Esposito winced and pointed upstairs with his head. "No, just two of them. They're upstairs trying to calm the girls down. They're practically kids."

"Fine." Kate wrote something on her pad and pointed to both the boys with her pen. "You two go upstair-"

"Hmm hmm. " Castle hawked.

Beckett sighed and turned to her partner, one of her bests 'looks' on. "What, Castle?"

He just stood there, looking at her, pouting and giving her the most devastating puppy dog eyes she had ever seen.

"Ugh. Ok!" The detective growled. She turned to Ryan and Esposito again, trying to ignore the boys' knowing look. No one talked about it, but they all knew that Castle and Beckett's little secret wasn't such a thing anymore. "_We_ will go upstairs to interview the witnesses, and you guys can go back to the precinct and try to contact the owners of the house. Maybe any of them knows who our headless man is."

* * *

When Castle and Beckett entered the room, the two girls were still crying. Four boys, around 20 years old were surrounding them, trying to comfort them.

"Come on, Becca. It's ok. It's gonna be ok, baby." A blond young man, mumbled in the ear of a brunette girl who was grabbing his shirt for dear life.

"I told you we should have left!" She sobbed. "We could have died!"

Beckett walked inside the room, clearing her throat to attract the kids' attention. "Hi. I'm detective Kate Beckett and this is my partner, Rick Castle. We need to ask you some questions about what happened here tonight."

The boys nodded, stepping aside to let her get closer to them. "Can you please tell me what happened? How did you find the body?"

A tall, dark haired boy talked. "We were following the instructions. They give you an itinerary. You have to follow the rules and do what they tell you so you don't miss any of the 'acts'."

"Acts?" Castle asked.

Another boy nodded. "Yes. They have like a show, you know? Things happen all around the house, but it's not funny if you're not there to see them, right?"

The writer frowned. "Right."

"So you have to follow the itinerary. First you have to leave the suitcase in your room, then you have to meet with the others at the corridor and then you go downstairs and enter the living room. Things happen when you do that. Like noises in the room, the drawers open by themselves, the frames on the walls move… That kind of stuff."

"Uh huh." Beckett assented. "So you went into the living room and…?"

Carl sniffled and went on with the story. "We got in there and the sheet said that we had to open the coffin, so we did." The boy stopped and took a deep breath, sneaking his arm around his girlfriend's shoulders. "There were like a million garlic heads in there and we thought it was funny."

A strangled laugh sounded behind Castle.

"Ok, go on." Beckett encouraged. "What happened then?"

Carl swallowed and licked his lips. "We… Billy started throwing the garlic to us. We were playing. It was fun. Then, one of the heads hit Becca in the face." Carl stopped and looked back at the girl. "There was blood in it."

"And then you stopped throwing the garlic?" Beckett asked.

Billy coughed and scratched his head. "Um, no. I thought it was fake blood. You know, like cranberry syrup or something like that. I didn't realized it was real until I touched the guy's hair."

Castle tilted his head to one side, narrowing his eyes in wonder. "How did you know the head wasn't fake?" He asked intrigued. "It could have been part of the atrezzo."

The boy shook his head effusively. "No, man. No way those eyes could be fake. The moment I saw it I knew it was real."

Beckett took a pause from writing on her pad and took a look at the six kids. "So I guess that's when you called 911, right?"

"Yes." Carl agreed.

"Can we go now?"

Beckett turned to look at the girl snuggled against Carl's side, her eyes red rimmed and her hair tousled. "Sure. We'll call you if we need to ask you anything else. Thanks for your collaboration." She blurted, stepping aside, so that the two girls and Carl could get up from the bed they were sitting on and get out of the room.

* * *

When they were alone, Beckett looked at Castle who was still lost in thought. "What? You think any of them did it?" She asked.

"No. Not really. They were all too shaken." He replied. "_But, _I seriously think that we need to take a look at the place, see if the CSU missed anything."

Beckett smiled, walking closer to him and pocking him with a finger. "You just want to snoop around the haunted house, Castle."

"Yes. So what? I'm just trying to do a thorough investigative work, detective." He said, circling her waist with his arms and bringing her closer to him. "But since you're so reluctant, I've decided to start my exploration somewhere else."

Castle leaned in and caught her mouth with his; nipping on her lower lip until she moaned his name.

"Castle…" Kate sighed. "We shouldn't do this. Hands to ourselves when we're working, remember?"

Castle chuckled and moved his burning lips to her neck, running his tongue along the length of it. "We've tried that, Kate. Never works." He mumbled, making her skin stand up in goosebumps. "We need another course of action."

"Uh huh."

The detective felt her knees start to fail her and hooked her arms around her boyfriend's neck, letting out a gasp when he took it as an encouragement and bit down hard on her jugular.

"Aaahhh. Castle! If I find a mark in there later, you're a dead man!" She threatened.

He laughed. "No marks." He whispered against her ear. "I know you a little, you know?"

Castle was waiting for her reply, but it never came. When he removed his lips from her neck to look at her, the look in her eyes was anything but amused, or even aroused.

"Kate?" He called. "What is it? Are you ok?"

"I… um… th-that painting. It winked!" She gasped. "H-How did it wink?"

Castle turned around to check on the painting. It was an old man sitting on a bench with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. His eyes were both open and he was smiling.

"Kate… This is a haunted house. It was probably one of the tricks they use for the guests." He tried to reassure her. There was no way it could be anything else.

Kate nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, it has to be that." She laughed nervously. "It just caught me by surprise. I wasn't expecting that."

"Of course." The writer replied, letting a mild mocking tone in. "That's why you practically stopped breathing."

Kate glared at him, her eyes practically burning his skin. "You better stop that if you want to continue what you started here later." She warned.

"Later?"

Suddenly, all the doors in the corridor started slamming closed one by one, startling the couple, who were still tangled in each other's arms, looking at the corridor incredulously.

Kate let go of Castle's neck and straightened her blouse with unsteady hands. "Ok, this is officially freaking me out.

"Yeah. Me too. Let's get out of here."

That was easy to say, but when they tried to open the door that led to the stairs, it didn't work.

"Castle, it doesn't open…" Kate said through gritted teeth as she tried to turn the doorknob over and over again.

The writer swallowed hard and rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his mind. "What do you mean, 'it doesn't open'?"

"That it's opening easily, Castle. What the hell would I mean?" Kate snapped.

"Ok. _Ok_. Let's calm down. We're both getting nervous." Castle said. "There are people down there who know we're here."

"Yeah, the-…"

The lights went off.

They were locked in the dark, in the second floor of a 'haunted' house. Could it get any worse?

Apparently, yes.

Steps. They heard steps coming towards them, and they were not regular steps. These were heavy and slow, as if someone were dragging their feet along the floor.

"Hello?" Kate called. "We're locked in here! Can you help us?"

"Grrrrraaaahhhhuuummmlllll"

Castle grabbed Kate's hand and pulled her to him. "What the hell was that?" He hissed.

The guttural noise came out again, a little closer this time.

"I don't know, but we better get outta here!" She whispered. "Open up, you stupid door!"

They both struggled with the wooden piece until they heard a crack and the door popped open.

The two partners ran downstairs as fast as they could, making the CSU team and all the uniforms in the living room look at them in confusion. Before they could start explaining their behavior, they heard someone coming down the stairs. Kate practically jumped the three steps left and walked backwards until her body hit the wall. Castle followed.

Their faces went white when Ryan and Esposito came down the stairs, laughing so hard they couldn't breathe.

"Oh, my God!" Ryan said between shallow breaths. "That was the funniest thing ever!"

"You bet, bro!" Espo replied. "You should see your faces."

The latin detective, passed by them and handed Castle an ipad with a 'remote' app open.

"This house is better than a video game, man."

With that, the two detectives left the house, still laughing at their partners.

Kate gritted her teeth and plucked the ipad from Castle's hands. "You better start thinking of a good alibi, 'cause I'm gonna kill those two."

Castle nodded and added, "And I'll help."

* * *

**Any thought? Ideas? Complaints? Would you guys like to read more of this? Let me know!**

**Thanks so much for reading :)**


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